Wednesday
Oct072009
Wordless Wednesday: Is there a breastfeeding article amongst those Enfamil ads?
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
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Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Reader Comments (22)
Heh, presumably because of me being in the UK I see entirely different ads.. one for a co sleeper and at the bottom an ad for YouTube :)
@Claire: That is why I did the screen capture, so that everyone could see what I see.
Uggg I HATE it!!!!!! I want a happy breastfed baby pictured with no 'constipation complaint'!!!!!
I viewed the page 8-10 different times, each time there were different ads (mostly for Fontbonne University), but I never saw the ads you saw. I was using FireFox.
@Jamie: I think the ads are often geo-targeted. Which country are you located in?
I was reading another article about the Nestle blog. Less blatant, but one of the ads was for store brand baby formula. I feel all unclean and have a strong desire to scrub my cookies clean.
Wow. Just...wow.
How long is it going to take before our country is comfortable with breastfeeding?
Maybe you shamed them into taking the f*rmula ads off! ;)
@Lauren: Nope - they are still there. I think the advertising is geo targeted though, so you may see something different depending on your IP address. That is why I took a screen capture of what I saw.
Gretchen & I were there!!
@Desiree Fawn: Yay! I was there in Ottawa. Hope there weren't formula ads surrounding you in real life like there are in this article.
Thankfully not! I hope you had a fabulous time too!
Isn't it well-known that formula companies buy breastfeeding keywords? That's why you ALWAYS see formula ads around breastfeeding content. When I owned Celebrity Baby Blog, I blocked formula URLs from my Google Adsense settings (but I'm sure some slipped by).
@That Danielle: Yes, it is well known. And it is deceptive, inappropriate and inexcusable, IMO. It certainly is not acting within the "spirit of the WHO code" as some claim they do.
Oh I totally agree. I wonder how effective advertising next to breastfeeding articles are or if they just throw money at it because they have such huge ad/marketing budgets. I'm guessing the way this particular ad is worded that MOST people will read it as "...compared to breastfeeding" not "compared to other formulas" so it will have high CTR.
The way that formula companies buy breastfeeding keywords seriously annoys me. It really ruins their credibility. How can you claim that you're supporting breastfeeding, when this so clearly undermines it?
[...] is not the only company that does this. For example, Enfamil has ads with smiling babies splattered all over websites right now. But that shouldn’t be an excuse. Even my five year old understands that saying “but [...]
[...] are involved in this type of marketing. To be clear, on a sliding scale this is not even close to Enfamil or Nestle or other formula companies. Not even close. But I would argue, and others do argue, [...]
[...] Kingdom, Australia and others) and it falls short in developing countries. Other companies like Enfamil, Similac, and Heinz continue to violate the code regularly, as do bottle manufacturers such as [...]
[...] really bothered by infant formula advertising. There is too much of it, it is too prominent, it is often found all over breastfeeding and other baby related articles in newspapers and magazines, and it is deceptive. The formula companies will do anything at all to convince mothers to give [...]
That's a lot of formula ads! & you are right - i didnt even notice the breastfeeding article in the centre right away!
I ended up here because I was googling to see if some link between medela and enfamil exists (sounds diabolic but why not, also, I'd be interested in seeing some numbers but I do believe, also because of my recent personal experience, that pumping is a highway to formula supplementing). Anyhow, the way these companies are doing marketing is pretty interesting (I for instance received samples of enamel when my daughter wasn't even born , and just in case I'd forget about them I received more in the hospital and at the pediatrician… :-/).